License Committee Report

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Jan,

I appreciate your perspective, but I side with Russell on this one.   
It is one thing for software which *distributes* the code to include an 
advertisement, but a different thing for people who *use* a product to 
be required to acknowledge it.   If nothing else, it can become 
arbitrarily difficult to determine if I've used an application which 
might indirectly access the below-licensed product.

That said, I agree its a subtle point which the OSI should consider 
carefully, but I still believe we should recommend rejection.

-- Ernie P.
IANAL, TINLA, TINAA, etc.

On Nov 8, 2004, at 3:52 PM, Jan Dockx wrote:

> On 8 Nov 2004, at 8:35h, Russell Nelson wrote:
>
>> I'm the chair of the license approval committee.  This is my report
>> for the current set of licenses under discussion.  If anybody
>> disagrees with my assessment of the committee's conclusions, say so
>> promptly.
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>
>> Title: Academic Citing License
>> Submission:
>> http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:8728:200409:
>> mmpfkiadnfpihdobmdkc
>> License: in the submission.
>> Comments:  Stephen C. North, among others, agrees with me that the
>>   requirement to cite the software is a restriction on use rather than
>>   distribution.  Since we very much want to keep that camel's nose out
>>   of the tent, we should reject this license, well-intentioned though
>>   it is.
>> Recommend: rejection.
>>
>
> I for one, don't agree with this assessment. The issue of the submitter
> is real, and doesn't impose on the
> spirit of Open Source. More to the point, I think that the license does
> not impose a restriction on use,
> but it does impose a restriction on the _distribution_ of the data and
> results gained from using the
> software. I believe the difference is significant. This issue doesn't
> differ significantly from the "obnoxious
> BSD advertising clause"-issue of the original BSD license, and the
> original BSD license is approved obviously.
> I ask the committee to take a second look at this issue.
>
>